Discovery Invests $20M in Grockit to Reach ‘Lifelong Learners’ Online

Moving away from a strictly-students market, one education-tech venture called Grockit has gained popularity and a new $20 million Series E investment led by Discovery Communications, which continues to broaden its educational content “beyond cable.”

Associated Press

With Discovery investing in an educational startup, users will determine whether there will be “Shark Week” lessons online.

According to Grockit CEO Roy Gilbert (an ex-Googler and U.S. Navy veteran), the entirety of the $20 million will go towards redesign and expansion of the company’s new “social learning platform” called Learnist.

Learnist, or Learn.ist in its current iteration, allows approved users to create “learn boards,” comprised of e-books, video content, Web pages and other digital material that show off their subject matter expertise. Anyone, not just paying students, can connect with them via Learnist.

As part of the Series E funding deal, Grockit also entered into a strategic partnership with its backers at Discovery. Is a Shark Week “learn board” in store?

A chief digital officer at Discovery, Jean-Briac “JB” Perette, said he doesn’t know where Discovery’s content could appear throughout Learnist, as “that’s up to the users.”

However, Discovery invested in the company because: “Our digital strategy is true to the mission of the company’s founder, to ignite and satisfy curiosity. We invest in the next-generation knowledge space to do this beyond cable,” he noted.

While technically Discovery led the Series E investment in Grockit, Perette views it more “like a Series A investment in Learnist.” Launched in the summer of 2012, Learn.ist–a site, and apps for iPhone and iPad users–does not yet generate revenue for Grockit.

When it started in 2007, Grockit leveraged social media and peer-to-peer concepts to transform test-prep online.

Grockit founder Farb Nivi, a one-time Kaplan teacher, says his company’s test prep products are still profitable and successful, so it plans to maintain and support these. But he and Grockit investors view social learning as a much larger opportunity overall.

Grockit executives said they were focused on building their Learnist audience and user base, and on products more than a monetization strategy in the near term. However, Perette suggested they could generate revenue through advertising and highly targeted referrals.

“With digital we have the benefits of a two-way dialogue, constantly. Talking about what we know is incredibly powerful, so is learning about things we don’t know. It does not stop at age 22 when you graduate from college. Learnist, like Discovery, is going after the lifelong learners,” he added.

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